Dr Piers Locke

Dr Piers Locke is senior lecturer in anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, University of Canterbury.

Piers Locke is lecturer in anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, University of Canterbury.

He trained in South Asian studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and in anthropology at the University of Kent. His primary interests are in the history and ethnography of Nepal, environmental anthropology, and human-animal relations.

Piers has been conducting fieldwork in and around the Chitwan National Park since 2011, focusing on captive elephant management, tourism, and biodiversity conservation. During his doctoral fieldwork Piers apprenticed as a mahout at the Khorsor Elephant Breeding Center, where he also coproduced the documentary film Servants of Ganesh. His interest in human-elephant relations extends throughout South and Southeast Asia, and is concerned with multidisciplinary approaches to the human-elephant nexus.

His most recent research project concerns the historical photography of human-elephant relations in colonial South Asia. Piers is a member of the New Zealand South Asia Centre and the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies.

For more details, see Piers Locke’s profile.